The following day Jasper woke up with a stretch. He’d managed not to be bothered by the wildlife for the night, but the ground was not the most comfortable bed. That was another thing added to Jasper's ever-growing list of things he needed to get done.
“But first breakfast.” He said once again talking to himself. Just like the night before he went through the process of catching a fish and cooking it. Then he decided he needed to spend some time exercising. Exercise was a surefire way to build his strength stat, so he went about doing pushups, sit-ups, and various other exercises until he received a +1 to strength. After that, he bathed at the river again and started his study of runes.
He began by copying down each rune on a bunch of small pieces of bark he tore off of a tree close by. Through this method, he learned the runes for speed, magic, shrink, harden, change, cleanse, diagnose, harden, bind, beacon, tracking, space, contain, and sharpening. Through learning each of the runes he also noticed that some of the runes were duplicates, but Jasper couldn’t see a reason for it. Finally, having time for some real study had gained him a full two levels and several stat points. Jasper decided that it was time to check his stat sheet again for the first time in a while.
JASPER CARTWRIGHT LEVEL 9 STATS
STRENGTH: 23
VITALITY: 57
DEXTERITY: 51
CREATIVITY: 41
MAGIC: 74
CONTROL: 73
Jasper gaped at his growth and checked his skills as well, finding that they’d also grown. His imbue rune skill was the closest to leveling up at 89% followed by summon toolbelt at 73% and summon journal at 60%. He basically ignored all notifications that showed how much his skills were increasing because it was usually such a small amount of experience. It was nice to know that after hundreds of runes and writing a lot of notes he was making progress.
Jasper was extremely happy with the one rune that he knew would complete his experiment from the day before. Excitedly he went back to the hut and grabbed his little chunk of wood. He took ten minutes to add the new rune right between direction and floating then imbued it. As soon as the magic was running through it, he took control of the object with his mind and pushed it away from him.
With the addition of the rune of speed, the bark took off so fast that Jasper couldn’t even see it. Instead, he heard a thump against a tree nearby. Jasper took off running toward the sound and found his new item shattered into several pieces at the base of the tree it had smacked into. The tree itself had a very clear indentation where the piece of bark must have hit it. Jasper groaned turned away and went to grab his claw to pry off more bark. He had a feeling that this experiment was going to be a long one.
Taking roughly an hour to write each rune as perfectly as possible and then another one for the protective circle meant that it would take at least 2 hours for each attempt. He’d gone through two more attempts before having the idea to change the order of the runes. This time he placed the control rune between speed and direction. This time when he imbued it, he was able to control the speed and direction of the projectile, but it kept trying to float higher and higher. Jasper summoned his journal and pen and started to speak out loud to get his thoughts in order as the magic tool wrote.
“Control rune has to be placed in sequence to control the other runes around it. I can either place a second control rune in the sequence or attempt a different form. Does the sequence have to be written in a circle? Or was that an ancient stylistic choice? I’ll attempt changing the placement of the runes first, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll try it with multiple control runes.” Once Jasper finished with his notes he started on the new version, and he was determined that he was going to make this work.
This time instead of doing a complete circle he wrote the control rune first then he wrote the other three in a triangle formation around it. Finishing up with the final protective circle he decided to sit in the ambulance for a short time because he was starting to feel slightly nauseous. He looked at his status effects and realized that his poison and radiation had been leveling slowly over the night and throughout the day. He’d have to keep an eye on that. Each of the effects was low level right now, but it was noticeable and getting in his way. Jasper decided that to not have to stop now and then he'd just cleanse himself once in the morning and once at night before he started his day.
He finished his cleansing and then came back outside to finish up. Providing the project with magic he was excited to find that this time he was able to move his piece of bark in any direction at slow or fast speeds. Now that he had a mockup it was time to test how many of them, he could control at one time. It took another several hours of crafting and testing, but by the end of it, he found that he could control three of them comfortably and four of them with some effort. Once Jasper got to five floating projectiles it all fell apart. He just couldn’t keep them all straight in his head and got confused causing all of them to just fly in different directions at high speeds almost hitting himself in the process.
Now that he knew what his limits were with his idea it was time to change the medium of his crafting. Bark wouldn’t do much to help him defend himself from monsters. Jasper found a few thin stones and began chipping away at their edges shaping them into small arrowheads. Jasper wasn’t used to this level of detail work on such a small surface. That coupled with the fact he was using the wrong tool on the wrong medium meant that he wound up with a trash-level projectile. With how poorly they were crafted Jasper could only control a single arrowhead. It was disappointing having to let the idea of having flying arrowheads zipping around killing monsters left and right sit on a shelf for a while longer.
Not for the first time, Jasper marveled at how well made the ambulance was. He had a feeling that if it had been made poorly then he wouldn’t have even been able to get it to work at all. Jasper let out a silent thanks to Pirka promising that if he ever could he would pay her back for the gift that had saved his life. Some day she would want for nothing. Thinking of Pirka reminded him of his other friends as well and for the first time in a while, Jasper found himself sitting and feeling the thrumming pain of loneliness.
There was still the sound of water rushing by animal and bug calls and the trees rustling in the wind. But Jasper couldn’t help but think how quiet it seemed to him. There were times that he dreamed about living out in the wilderness fighting for his life. In those dreams, though he always had his friends with him, and he was a powerful warrior that could easily take down beasts in a single hit. Now though he was a man with a wonky arrowhead, and he was completely alone. Depression began to set in but as it did the bushes nearby rustled slightly causing Jasper to focus in on it completely.
He sent mana into his arrowhead immediately and it floated out of his hand and followed him. As he carefully stalked forward, he kept his eyes on the thicket. He activated his electricity runes as he walked closer to the bush, but he didn’t want to get too close. He also grabbed one of his grenades out of his pocket. He didn’t activate it yet though worrying about running out of mana before the fight even started. Jasper finally got close enough to the bush he could see the cold slit eyes of the creature that hunted him.
He recognized those eyes; they were the same ones he saw at the riverbank when he hid and held his breath. The same ones that had given Jasper the feeling of death the day before. “It must have recognized my scent from the other day and tracked me.” He thought as he began backing away carefully making sure that he wasn’t going to step on any of the stones that were giving off a low humming sound. It might not hurt him enough to cause major damage to him, but he knew from the shocks he’d received from cooking the fish that it would still really hurt.
Once he had put some of his traps between himself and the large spiky cat, he finally activated his grenade and tossed it into the bush. It exploded and the cat jumped out of the bush with an ear-piercing yowl. It didn’t look like it was hurt, so it must have just scared the great beast, but he got lucky because when the cat landed it was directly on one of his shocking traps. The fur on the cat stood on end and it screamed again and rolled over onto its back. Unfortunately for the beast, it rolled directly over another one.
Jasper watched this for a few seconds trying to find a good place to shoot his arrow to kill it immediately. It moved too quickly though rolling around in pain. Eventually, the monster finished rolling, seeming to have figured out the cause of its pain. It panted heavily and stared at Jasper with a certain amount of intelligence in its eyes. It started to slowly back away towards the forest. Relief almost flooded Jasper thinking that he wouldn’t have to risk his life again, but before it did, he looked at the cat’s face again.
Instinctually Jasper could feel that the cat wasn’t admitting defeat. Its intelligent eyes didn’t say “I’m giving up and I’ll leave you alone.” It was saying that this wasn’t over and that it would be back to kill him later. Those were the eyes of an experienced hunter. Eventually, Jasper would have to leave his camp either to gather food or more crafting supplies. No, he couldn’t just let this go, he needed to kill this creature, or it would continue to hunt him.
Jasper fired his arrow with a thought, but the cat moved at the last second. The arrow missed the eye that had become Jasper’s target, instead, it hit one of its ears the ear exploded and the cat screamed again but it was already running into the forest. He attempted to call the arrow back to fire it again but by the time he was ready to aim again the beast was already gone.
“Damnit!” Jasper cursed. Not only did he have to survive in this hell hole, and probably fight other monsters soon, but now he had a very dangerous monster that had a vendetta against him out there hunting him. He seethed in anger once again thinking about the magistrate reading off the charges and sentencing him to banishment. The man had the nerve to even appear apologetic after that. Jasper had to take some calming breaths to get himself to calm down, but he was just so angry.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He was angry at the cat, angry at the magistrate, at the unfairness of his life, and at himself for being so weak. That’s what made him angrier than anything, if he’d been stronger, he could have figured out a way to stay in the city he’d seen that kind of thing before. Strong hunters and rich people were all the time getting away with breaking the law simply because of who they were. Jasper wanted to scream and punch the ground, but unfortunately, he knew that he would just draw in more monsters if he did that so instead, he just stood there continuing to seethe and feeling weak and impotent at being able to change the circumstances of his new life.
He squeezed the arrowhead in his hand so hard that he felt blood seep through his fingers and drip onto the ground. The pain in his hand finally snapped him out of his anger and suddenly all he felt was tired. He wanted to go back to bed immediately, but instead, he checked each of his traps. Some of the ink had been smudged on a few of them, especially the ones that had helped in his fight against the giant truck. He took the time to fix the ones that were only slightly smudged and then had to rewrite the other ones completely.
Jasper spent the following day working on a new arrowhead. This time he didn’t try to make it so small. Instead, he took one of the fangs that he’d taken from the raptor’s skull, and as carefully as he could he chipped away at the edges of the larger stone. By the end of it, the arrowhead looked more like a small knife than an actual arrowhead. The care that he had to take not to wind up snapping it meant that it took much longer to get it right.
On the first attempt, he snapped the stone in half. On the second attempt the tip that he’d worked so hard on wound up breaking off. But on the third attempt he managed to get it right. The rock had a jagged serrated edge on both sides that tapered up to a point that wasn’t the sharpest, but it could still get the job done. After finding a couple of small cracks in the arrowhead he’d used in his fight he decided to add a hardening rune to his craft next.
Jasper had worked so hard on his new knife projectile though he didn’t want to experiment on it just yet. He went back to working on the bark starting out with a similar pattern to the one he’d used before with the four runes. This time though he wrote the runes of hardness, speed, direction, and floating in a box formation placing the rune of control in the center. Jasper thought that it would work, but unfortunately this time he couldn’t keep control of the bark and it just shook in place before lighting on fire and burning out.
If he could get the fire function without it zipping around and trying to take his head off, then that would be great. As it stood though, that would have to go further down on his to-do list. For now, Jasper wanted to focus on making his weaponry, because the next time he ran into that cat he wanted to be prepared. Going back through his notes he remembered that he was going to try adding another control rune if his new pattern didn’t work.
He did just that on the next attempt going back to a circular pattern he carefully wrote the runes. He always started with a control rune as his base every time he restarted. He tried several different combinations before he found one that worked exactly the way he wanted it to and when he did, he received a new notification.
NOTICE: You have crafted a good runic controllable floating piece of hard wood. +1000 XP, +6 Magic, +6 control, +5 Creativity. Would you like to name a runic controllable floating piece of hardwood? Y/N. Would you like to imbue a runic controllable floating piece of hard wood? Y/N.
Jasper chose to go ahead and imbue it and this time when he sent the piece of wood careening towards a tree the piece of bark sunk into it with a thud. He even had a small amount of trouble getting his projectile back out. He managed it in the end, though only because he went over there and bodily tugged at it. It still lost power after a while, but it was his most successful piece yet. He sketched the same runes on his stone knife and even though he was careful the material still didn’t mesh well with the tool he was using causing it to only be an average-level craft.
NOTICE: You have crafted an average runic stone knife of movement. +500 XP, +3 Magic, +3 control, +2 Creativity. Would you like to name the runic stone knife of movement? Y/N.
This time he did decide to name his craft, after all, he’d spent a lot of time and effort to create this knife and it was the most complicated item, he’d been able to make so far. He sat down to think about what to name it while mindlessly rubbing his thumb on the serrated edge of his new weapon. When he accidentally sliced his thumb open, he cursed.
“Fucking knife!”
Would you like to name the runic stone knife of movement “Fucking knife?” Y/N.
Jasper chuckled at the thought of naming his very first good weapon “Fucking Knife” feeling the first burst of actual entertainment he’d felt in a week. In the end, he selected no but didn’t throw the idea out completely choosing to name the knife “Effen” instead. That way he could remember what the name actually stood for, but if anyone another thousand years from now happened to find it they wouldn’t think that people from his time were just a bunch of wild degenerates naming their weapons after curse words. He received one more notification asking him to confirm the name of his knife and this time he selected yes.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! You have named your first runic item. As a reward, Effen will be automatically upgraded! +2500 XP, +2 All Stats.
Level Up! +1 All Stats
The knife began to glow in Jasper’s hand without him controlling it. He watched as the runes he had written on them were slowly carved into them from some unseen force. Then new runes that he hadn’t seen before and some that he had were added to it. The protective circles were erased from around each of the runes and instead replaced by a more complex one surrounding the entire grouping of runes. It wasn’t nearly as complicated as the one that surrounded the ones on the ambulance, so Jasper was able to understand it as it was written.
Effen has been upgraded to an excellent knife of critical wind cutter!
NOTICE: You have reached level 10 in the class Runic Crafter! Please choose from the following skill options!
Summon Toolbelt: Receive an extra tool for your toolbelt upon your next skill level-up.
Summon Journal: Receive an extra page in your journal upon your next skill level-up.
New Skill: Receive a new class skill!
Jasper looked over his new options after reaching level 10. There were thresholds in the levels where he knew he could be offered options like these, but he hadn’t thought about it because for combat classes they happened every 25 levels. He wasn’t sure how often they happened for crafters.
“I guess it would make sense for us to get them more often since it’s harder for us to level up,” he said, realizing the truth of his words. All hunters had to do was go out and use their powers to kill monsters around their own level it was a life-threatening job of course but the average time for a hunter to reach level ten was about a day. For Jasper, he had to study, experiment, practice, and have the right tools for the right material all while fighting off monsters and dealing with the poison and radiation on the surface. It had taken him over a week just to reach level ten.
Jasper stopped his pondering over leveling and looked back at the options he’d been provided for his own most recent level-up. Each of them had their own benefits which made it a difficult choice. Receiving an extra tool could mean the ability to use different materials at a higher rank of crafting if he didn’t choose that then odds are he’d just receive a saw when he leveled up Summon Toolbelt having the highest proficiency in it. A saw wouldn’t be bad, but he had already made one that worked pretty well, and if he added the rune of hardening to it, he wouldn’t have to remake it every time the jagged teeth broke. If he could receive some kind of masonry tools, then he could start learning how to make better stone tools.
Jasper wanted to select an extra tool as soon as he’d thought about making cutlery, and pottery. He wanted to start making stuff like that as soon as he could, but he held back his excitement and decided to think each option through before making his decision. The next option was one that he wasn’t particularly excited about. An extra page would be nice, but because of how small he wrote using the control of his pen he still had quite a bit of space on the page he had. But what if he ran out of space on the first page and the next one? Jasper was bound to learn more runes and crafting tricks. Having the ability to recall all of that information immediately without having to go back and figure out things he’d forgotten was a real boon. If he ran out of space too soon in his research his progress would slow down a lot, and he needed to be able to progress quickly. It wasn’t as thrilling as receiving a new tool, but it was a very important skill that he used often.
The last of the options was maybe the most exciting of all of them. A new skill that fits into my class could be anything, it could be a skill that lets him understand runes immediately. It could be one that let him discover the effects of his experiments by running them in his head. It could be something that raises the effectiveness of any of his crafts. The temptation was great, having a brand-new skill could open up so many new roads for him to travel. But on the other hand, it could be something that wasn’t immediately useful. Like a skill that raised his proficiency with power tools at a higher rate.
Something like that would be great later on after he’d figured out how to make tools like that, but right now he hadn’t the first clue. No Jasper wasn’t willing to take that risk right now. This was the time to make decisions that he knew for a fact would help him survive. Not take a gamble on something that might not help him until later. It was between a buff for his toolbelt or one for his journal. He finally made his decision after thinking about it for another few minutes. Jasper was much closer to leveling up his Summon Toolbelt skill than his Summon Journal Skill, especially after crafting Effen. Plus, he had a great need for more tools that might have better effects than anything he could make right now.
Without thinking more about it for fear that he might change his mind Jasper selected the option for Summon Toolbelt. He was confident that it was the right decision. After crafting Effen his skills had all raised by a good amount putting Imbue Runes at 99%, Summon Toolbelt at 94%, and after describing the process and details that he’d seen when Effen had upgraded his journal skill all the way up to 76%. It would still take some time to level up the skills, but Jasper felt the fire of enthusiasm burning in his heart.
The system had rewarded him for all of the hard work and pain that he’d had to go through since his banishment. Not only did he have an excellent new weapon, but he’d gained even more stats, and soon he’d receive two new tools. Turning his attention to Effen he thanked the blade and began practicing with it. The blade whipped through the air and as it did a small green light started glowing from it. Instinctually Jasper lifted his hand and directed Effen to slash. When it did there was a whistling sound and the next thing, he knew there was a giant gash in one of the nearby trees.
Jasper gaped in surprise at the damage the small stone blade had inflicted on the tree trunk. He found it was easier to use his mind and his hands to control the Effen and he made a note of it to explore later. Jasper directed it to come back to him and settle itself on his palm. Studying its surface, he recognized some of the runes pulling the information directly into his mind. He recognized ten control runes throughout the block of carved text. Then there were two magic runes weirdly enough each of those had a control rune in each cardinal direction. The next one Jasper recognized was the contain rune which also touched the magic runes. The last ones were hardening runes, two-speed runes, and one-directional rune. He continued to make notes on the positioning of each of the runes and speculation about why they might be placed the way they had been placed.
Jasper realized that the sun was going to start setting before too long, but he didn’t want to just yet. He was having so much fun studying Effen and practicing with her magic. In one way he wished that he’d named the blade something more regal or adventurous, and he would have if he’d known that it would have been improved by the system as much as it had been. “It’ll be fine I’m sure she likes her name. She wouldn’t be behaving so well if not, right?” Jasper chuckled at the thought of referring to his knife as if she was a person.
It just felt right to him to refer to the knife as a she, it’s not like it would hurt anything and no one was around for him to feel embarrassed about it. “As long as I don’t start talking to her like she’s a person I’ll be fine right?” He said shaking his head with a smirk on his face not noticing that Effen had turned towards him slightly shaking the point of her blade. Before going to sleep he decided that he was going to take his new weapon on a hunt.
He might not be able to find or kill the stupid cat that was bound to be out there somewhere, but with his new weapon, he’d be sure to kill a few things. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get any real levels from hunting, but with another raise in creativity, he was sure that having more crafting material wouldn’t hurt anything. So, Jasper began trekking into the woods. He wouldn’t get too far away from his new camp because he didn’t want to get lost. He thought that maybe he’d figure out some way to turn a rune of direction into a compass of some sort.
Jasper sighed after thinking about that. “Another one for the to-do list.” Despite his tone, he was actually fairly delighted that he had another idea for something to build. That one idea would spark another and then another and one day those ideas might spring into an entire society. A society that would be better than the ones in the wandering cities. It wouldn’t have anything like restricted classes, and everyone would have enough food. He’d finally put the mystery of the cities together. All the things the wandering cities were able to do. The ancient baubles you could find in shops around the city, one of which turned out to be a runic ambulance.
Thousands of years ago, there had been more Runic Crafters and they’d built wonders like the world had never seen. But Jasper knew that one day he would make things that would blow those ancient crafters’ minds. He would take back the surface of the planet building on top of the work of the ancients. But first this hunt.